IN my stormy and chequered life Chance has played more than
her fair part. The fault has been my own. Never at any time have
I tried to be the complete master of my own fate. The strongest
impulse of the moment has governed all my actions. When chance
has raised me to dazzling heights, I have received her gifts with
outstretched hands. When she has cast me down from my high pinnacle,
I have accepted her buffets without complaint. I have my hours
of penance and regret. I am introspective enough to take an interest
in the examination of my own conscience. But this self-analysis
has always been detached. It has never been morbid. It has neither
aided nor impeded the fluctuations of my varied career.

It has availed me nothing in the eternal struggle which man
wages on behalf of himself against himself. Disappointments have
not cured me of an ineradicable romanticism. If at times I am
sorry for some things I have done, remorse assails me only for
the things I have left undone.

I was born in Anstruther in the county of Fife on September
2nd, 1887. My father was a preparatory schoolmaster, who migrated
to England in 1906. My mother was a Macgregor. My ancestors include
Bruces, Hamiltons, Cummings, Wallaces and Douglases, and I can
trace a connection back to Boswell of Auchinleck. There is no
drop of English blood in my veins.

My childhood memories are of little interest to any one except
myself. My father was a keen Rugby football player and a member
of the Scottish Rugby Union Selection Committee. My mother's brothers
were well-known Scottish athletes. I therefore received my first
"rugger" ball at the age of four and, under the tuition
of various Scottish Internationals, could drop a goal almost as
soon as I could walk. What is stranger is the fact that my father,
who was no player, was also an ardent cricket enthusiast. When
my third brother was born, I clapped my hands and exclaimed delightedly:
"Now we shall have one to bat, one to bowl, and one to keep
wicket!" Then, repairing to the kitchen, I stole a raw beefsteak
and placed it in his cradle in order that he might the quicker
develop bone and muscle. I was seven at the time!

In other respects, my education was normal. I received my fair
share of corporal punishment---chiefly for playing football or
cricket on the Sabbath, which my father observed strictly. At
the age of twelve I gained a foundation scholarship at Fettes,
where I spent five years in the worship of athleticism. This exaggerated
devotion to games interfered sadly with my studies. In my first
term at Fettes I was first in the Latin sentence paper set for
the whole school, with the exception of the VIth form, and corrected
by the headmaster himself. During the rest of my school career
I was never again within the first fifty, and, although I succeeded
in reaching the VIth form, I was a grievous disappointment to
my parents. In order to rid me of an unwholesome fetish, my father
sent me to Berlin instead of allowing me to go to Cambridge, where
a few years later my second brother was to distinguish himself
by obtaining two Blues, forfeiting in the process the first-class
"honours" in modern languages which otherwise he almost
certainly would have secured.

To Germany and to Professor Tilley I owe much. Tilley was an
Australian who had become more Prussian than the Prussians, even
to the extent of dropping the "e" from his name and
signing himself after the manner of the great German soldier of
fortune. His methods were spartan and pitiless, but he showed
me how to work---a virtue which, in spite of many backslidings,
I have never entirely lost. He taught me two other valuable lessons---respect
for institutions and customs other than English and the secret
of mastering foreign languages. The first has helped me out all
through my life in my relations with foreigners. The second was
to stand me in good stead when seven years later I went to Russia.
If Tilley is still alive, I hope he will see this tribute to his
thoroughness. In my life his was the one influence which I can
describe as wholly beneficial.

From Berlin I was sent to Paris, where I came under the influence
of that good and godly man, Paul Passy. From him I acquired an
excellent French accent and my first insight into Welsh revivalist
methods. Passy, who was the son of Frédéric Passy,
the eminent French jurist and pacifist, was the gentlest of Calvinists.
As a young man he had wanted to be a missionary and, serious in
all things, he had trained himself for his arduous career by eating
rats. An affection of the lungs prevented this great scholar from
burying himself in the wilds of China or the remoter South Sea
Islands. The heathens' loss became science's gain, and today the
name of Passy is linked eternally with the names of Sweet and
Viëtor in the honours list of the pioneers of modern phonetics.
In spite of his absorption in his linguistic studies, Passy never
abandoned his good works or his reclamation of sinners. When first
I knew him, he was under the influence of Evan Roberts, the Welsh
evangelist, and for the only time in a varied career I had the
strange experience of appearing on the platform and singing Welsh
revivalist hymns in French before a Paris slum audience. Passy
said the prayers and played the harmonium with three fingers,
while I sang the solos supported by a chorus of three trembling
English students.

If life is a succession of accidents, the series in my own
life has been rapid. After three years in France and Germany,
I returned to England in order to undergo a final preparation
for the Indian Civil Service. Fate and my own genius for drifting
ruled otherwise. In 1908, my uncle, one of the pioneers of the
rubber-growing industry in the Malay States, came home from the
East and fired my imagination with wonderful tales of the fortunes
that were to be made almost for the asking in that elusive and
enchanting land. Already the travel-bug had entered my blood,
and in my desire for new worlds and new adventures, I decided
to throw in my lot with the rubber-planters and to go East.

My student days in Berlin and Paris had been serious and blameless.
In Germany a passionate devotion to Heine---even today I can recite
by heart most of the Intermezzo and the Heimkehr---inspired me
with an innocent attachment to the daughter of a German naval
officer. I sailed my boat on Wannsee by moonlight. I sighed over
my Pilsener on the terrace of a Schlachtensee café. I sang---in
the presence of her mother---the latest and most romantic Viennese
and Berlin Lieder. And I mastered the German language. But there
were no adventures, no escapades, no excesses. In France I steeped
myself in the exotic sentimentalism of Loti, whom I once met and
whose eccentricities and mincing manners failed to cure me of
an admiration which I feel to this day for the charm and beauty
of his prose. But my tears were shed over "Les Désenchantées"
in solitude. I learnt the farewell letter of Djénane by
heart. Three years later it was to be of good service to me in
my examination for the Consular Service. But I learnt it for the
mortification of my own soul. I made no attempt to imitate the
long series of "Mariages de Loti." Now the East was
to lead me along the broad highway of her unrestricted temptations.

.

CHAPTER TWO

N0 journey will ever give me the same enchantment as that first
voyage to Singapore. It remains in the memory as a delicious day-dream
in which I can recall every incident and which never fails to
console me in moments of sadness. Far more clearly than the numerous
travelling companions I have since met, I can see in my mind's
eye the captain, the smoking-room steward, the deck hands, the
obese and romantic purser, and the three German naval officers
who were my only serious rivals for first place in the deck sports.
But the real magic of that journey was. in the kaleidoscope of
wonderful colours and haunting landscapes which every twenty-four
hours was unfolded before my eyes. This pageant I enjoyed for
myself and by myself. I rose in the dark to catch that first flutter
of the breeze which heralds the approach of the Eastern dawn and
waited with a delicious tremor of anticipation until the great
fire-ball of the sun burst through the pall of greyness and revealed
where sky ended and the calmest of seas began. Alone in the bows
I watched the saffron-tinted sunsets with their changing panoramas
of ships and armies, of kings and castles, of knights and fair
women, of adventures far more enthralling and vivid than the most
thrilling film-story. I was only twenty-one, and my thirst for
knowledge was unquenchable. I devoured every travel-book on which
I could lay my hands. Some of the books I read then are still
among my greatest treasures. Jules Boissière's "Fumeurs
d'Opium" remains the best book of its kind that I know. Others,
like Swettenham's "Unaddressed Letters," which bears
its date on every page, seem almost comic today. Then, however,
they were tremendously real. Lod was my hero, and like Lod I wrapped
myself in a mantle of melancholy solitude. At ports I fled instinctively
from my countrymen and, unaccompanied by any fawning guide, explored
at random what I conceived to be the native quarters. With the
exception of Victor Corkran, who, years older than myself, probably
found a whimsical pleasure in drawing me out and in listening
to the extravagant dreams and confident ambitions of an all-too-conceited,
because self-conscious, youth, I made few friends. Nevertheless,
he was kind, and concealed his amusement behind a mask of sympathy.
He had travelled widely and knew strange scraps of history and
folk-lore which were not to be found in guidebooks. On board the
Buelow he was a Roman in a horde of Goths, and today I am grateful
to him for many a valuable lesson which, doubtless, he was unaware
that he was imparting.

Above all, I learned to appreciate the beauty of warm colours
and luxuriant vegetation. An orchid in the Malayan jungle meant
more, means more to me today, than the most beautiful "cattleya"
on the breast of the most beautiful woman. The glowing warmth
of the tropical sun became a necessity to my physical existence
and a stimulant to my mind. Even today I cannot think of those
cloudless Eastern skies, those long stretches of golden sand with
their background of cooling palms and lofty casuarinas without
a feeling of longing which is almost akin to physical pain. Like
Fauconnier's hero I have come to believe that every country where
a man cannot live naked in all seasons is condemned to work, to
war, and to the hampering restraint of moral codes. Today, the
fogs of an English winter are to me as grim a nightmare as the
walls of my Bolshevik prison.

And yet in this Malaya, which I love, which remains as the
pleasantest regret in my life, and which I shall never see again,
I was a failure. On my arrival in Singapore I was sent as a "creeper"
to a rubber plantation outside Port Dickson. Earth knows no gem
more beautiful than this tiny harbour which lies at the entrance
to the Straits of Malacca. At that time it was unspoilt by the
intrusion of the white man. The climate was almost perfect. Its
coast-line was like an opal changing in colour with every angle
of the sun. The stillness of its nights, broken only by the gentle
lapping of the sea on the casuarina-crested shore, brought a peace
which I shall never know again.

I enjoyed every minute of my year there. But I was an indifferent
planter. The pungent odour of the Tamil coolies I could not abide.
I learnt enough of their language to carry out my duties. Today,
beyond stock-phrases of command and a string of oaths, I have
forgotten every word. The Chinese, with their automatic accuracy,
made no appeal to me, and the actual estate work, the filling
in of check rolls, the keeping of accounts, bored me. My head-manager,
a brother-in-law of the late Lord Forteviot, was easy-going and
benevolent to my shortcomings. Very quickly I entered into the
life of the British planter. I learnt to drink the inevitable
"stengah" [Whisky and soda] . Once a month I went with
my chief to the neighbouring town of Seremban and imbibed vast
quantities of gin "pahits" in the Sungei Ujong Club.
At week-ends I travelled about the country playing football and
hockey and making hosts of new acquaintances. The hospitality
of the Malaya of those golden, prosperous days of 1908 was for
a youngster almost overwhelming, and few there were who survived
it unscathed.

During my stay at Port Dickson I had one minor triumph, the
echo of which I hear faintly to this day.

Within a few months of my arrival in the country, I went up
to Kuala Lumpur to play "rugger" for my State, Negri
Sembilan, against Selangor. Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Selangor
and of the Federated Malay States. Selangor itself has the largest
white population of any State and, at that time, its "rugger"
side contained several international players including that gargantuan
and good-natured Scot, "Bobby" Neill. In those days
Negri Sembilan could hardly muster fifteen "rugger"
players. Certainly, we had never beaten Selangor, and I doubt
if we had ever beaten any other state. Notwithstanding the climate,
"rugger" is the most popular of all spectacles in Malaya,
and, in spite of the apparent disparity in strength between the
two sides, a large gathering of Europeans and natives turned out
to see the match, which was played on the Kuala Lumpur Padang.
Those who witnessed this classic encounter were rewarded with
one of the greatest surprises in the history of sport. The match
was played about Christmas time, and Selangor were not in training.
Perhaps they rated their opponents a little too lightly. At any
rate at half-time Selangor were leading by a try and a penalty
goal dropped by the ponderous "Bobby" to a try scored
by myself. Soon after the beginning of the second half, it was
obvious that Selangor were tiring, and the crowd---a Selangor
crowd---delighted at the prospect of a surprise victory, cheered
us on. I was fortunate enough to score a second try, and with
five minutes to go the scores were level. Then, from a line-out,
a big New Zealander, who had played a sterling game for us, threw
the ball back to me, and from just inside half-way I dropped a
goal.

We had perpetrated the greatest joke for years, and the Selangor
team and the spectators were sportsmen enough to appreciate it.
I was carried off the field in triumph to the "Spotted Dog,"
the once famous club which stands on the edge of the Padang. There
I was surrounded by a host of people whose names I did not know,
but who were old Fettesians---Scotsmen, who knew my brother or
my father, and who slapped me on the back and insisted on standing
me a drink. Long before dinner time I must have had a drink, perhaps
several drinks, with nearly every one in the room. By the time
I arrived at the F.M.S. Hotel, where an official dinner was being
given to the two teams, both teams and guests were in their places.
I was met at the door by "Bobby" Neill, who informed
me that the chair was being taken by the acting Resident-General,
and that I had been unanimously voted into the place of honour
on his right-hand at the top table. This was my first experience
of the limelight of publicity, and I did not like the ordeal.
My crowning achievement, however, was my conversation with the
R.G., to whom I talked like a father of my experiences in the
East. They must have been too vividly described, for he informed
me reprovingly that he was a married man.

"Tamil or Malay, sir?" I asked him politely.

"Hush!" he said. "I've three children."

"Black or white, sir?" I continued with irrepressible
affability.

Fortunately, he had a sense of humour and a blind eye for the
failings of twenty-one, and, when next year's match came round,
he asked me to stay with him, came to see me play, and in his
speech referred to me---alas! no longer the fleet-footed speed-merchant
of the previous year---as "faint yet pursuing."

That fitful triumph had an unpleasant sequel. As the youngest
and, therefore, most insignificant and innocent member of the
visiting team, I had been quartered with the parson, a fine athlete
but a trifle strait-laced---especially for a padre in the tropics.
Kuala Lumpur, like Rome, being built on seven hills, I had some
difficulty in finding the good man's bungalow in the early hours
of the morning. Thanks, however, to the faithful "Bobby"
and to other kind friends I was steered safely to my room, and
by a great effort I succeeded in putting in an appearance at breakfast
the next morning---Sunday morning with a three-course Sunday breakfast
to celebrate it! Cold water had done wonders, and I looked not
too bad, but my voice had gone. As I croaked out my answers to
a fusillade of questions regarding my health and how I had slept,
Mrs. Padre looked at me pityingly:

"Ah, Mr. Lockhart," she said, "I told you, if
you did not put your sweater on after the game, you would get
a chill."

With that she rushed from the table and brought me a glass
of cough-mixture, which in that spirit of shyness, which even
to this day I have never quite overcome. I was too weak to refuse.
The result was instantaneous, and without a word I rushed from
the room. Never before, or since, have I suffered as I suffered
on that Sunday morning. I often wonder how much Mrs. Padre knew.
If she intended to teach me a lesson, the rewards of the schoolmaster
can never have been sweeter.

These wild excursions, however, were but episodes in a life
which in spite of the monotony of my work provided me with countless
new interests. The Malay gentleman at large, with his profound
contempt for work, made an instant appeal to me. I liked his attitude
to life, his philosophy. A man who could fish and hunt, who knew
the mysteries of the rivers and forests, who could speak in metaphors
and make love in "pantuns," was a man after my own heart.
I learnt his language with avidity. I studied his customs and
history. I found romance in the veiled mystery of his women-folk.
I devoted to my Malays the energy and enthusiasm which should
have been expended on the Tamil and Chinese coolies of my rubber
estate. Despising the unintellectual existence of the planter,
I sought my friends among the younger government officials. I
showed them my poems. They invited me to admire their water-colours.
There was one soulful young man---today he has reached the heights
of Colonial eminence---with whom I played duets on the piano.

I made friends, too, with the Roman Catholic missionaries ---splendid
fellows, voluntarily cutting themselves off from Europe and even
from the Europeans in the East and devoting their whole life to
tending their native flock and to reclaiming and educating the
half-caste population.

In the columns of the local newspaper I made my first essay
in journalism, and, although my morbid efforts to expose the Japanese
traffic in fallen women met with little favour, I achieved editorial
recognition and a demand for more work of a similar nature as
a result of a leader on the defects of Esperanto. Above all, I
read, and read seriously. The average planter's library might
contain a varied selection of the prose and poetry of Kipling,
but its chief stand-by in those days was the works of Hubert Wales
and James Blyth. I do not know what authors have taken their place
today, but to me Hubert Wales was neither lurid nor instructive.
I made a rule never to buy a novel, and to the weekly packet of
serious literature which I received from Singapore I owe my sanity
and my escape from the clutches of the Eastern Trinity of opium,
drink and women. All three were to spread the net of their temptations
over me, but reading saved me from the worst effects of a combined
offensive.

.

CHAPTER THREE

Twas my youthful craving for solitude which led me finally
into serious trouble. I was always tormenting my uncle with requests
for a job on my own. At last I was sent to open up a new estate
at the foot of the hills. The place, which for over a year was
to be my home, was ten miles away from any European habitation.
No white man had ever lived there before. The village on which
my estate bordered was the headquarters of a Sultan who had been
deposed and who was, therefore, not too friendly towards the English.
My house, too, was a ramshackle affair, verandahless and, although
slightly better than the ordinary Malay house, in no sense of
the word a European bungalow. A death-rate for malaria unequalled
in the whole State did not enhance the attractions of the place.
My only links with civilisation were a push-bike and the Malay
police corporal who lived two miles away. Nevertheless, I was
as happy as a mahout with a new elephant. During the day my time
was fully occupied. I had to make something out of nothing, an
estate out of jungle, to build a house for myself, to make roads
and drains where none existed. There were, too, minor problems
of administration which were a source of constant interest and
amusement to me: Malay contractors who had an excuse for every
backsliding; Tamil wives who practised polyandry on a strictly
practical basis---two days for each of their three husbands and
a rest on Sundays; an outraged "Vullimay" who complained
that "Ramasamy" had stolen his day; Chinese shopkeepers
who drove hard bargains with my storekeeper, and Bombay "chetties"
who stood round on pay day and held my coolies in their usurious
clutch.

With this mixed collection I held sway as the sole representative
of the British Raj. I dispensed justice without fear or favour,
and, if there were complaints against my authority, they never
reached my ears. During these first four months I was entirely
care-free. I worked hard at my Malay. I wrote short stories which
subsequently earned the unsolicited encomiums of Clement Shorter
and were published in the "Sphere." I began a novel
on Malay life---alas, never finished and now never likely to be---and
I continued my reading with praiseworthy diligence. For amusement
there was football and shooting and fishing. I felled a piece
of land, laid out a football ground, and initiated the Malays
of the village into the mysteries of "Soccer." In that
glorious hour before sunset I shot "punai," the small
Malay blue pigeon, as they were flighting. I dabbed for "ikanharouan"---the
coarse fish of the Malayan rice-ponds---with a small live frog
to take the place of a daddy-long-legs. Marvellous to relate,
I made friends with the deposed Sultan and especially with his
wife, the real ruler of the royal household and a wizened up old
lady with betel-stained lips and an eye that would strike terror
into the boldest heart. Rumour had it that she had committed every
crime in the penal code and many offences against God and man
which were not included in that list of human shortcomings. She
was, however, the Queen Victoria of her district, and, although
we subsequently became enemies, I bear her no grudge.

Among my own household I acquired an entirely unmerited reputation
as a revolver shot. My primitive bungalow was infested with rats,
which during meal-times would run down a round beam from the palm-thatched
roof to the floor. My little fox terrier would then rout them
out, while I stood with a rattan cane in my hand to knock the
rats down as they ran up the beam again. I killed scores of them
in this manner. Still better fun was shooting them with a revolver
as they crawled out from the "ataps" on to the ledge
of the wall and sat staring at me impudently. This practice certainly
improved my shooting. Then came the great day which was to invest
me in native eyes with the magic skill of a wizard.

The whole estate, including my own bungalow, was served by
a large well, round and deep, with great cracks in its earthy
sides between the water and the surface. One morning, as I was
breakfasting in solitary state, there was a fiendish gibbering
in the compound outside my office door. The chatter of many tongues
was accompanied by a chorus of women's wails. Infuriated, I rushed
out to discover the reason for this matitudinal interlude. A Tamil
coolie was lying groaning on the ground. Two hundred of his compatriots
surrounded him, shrieking, explaining, imploring. A batch of Malays
and the whole of my Chinese household stood round to offer advice
and see the end of the tragedy. The unfortunate. wretch had been
bitten by a snake. In jerks and pieces and with many contradictions,
the wildly excited crowd told its story. There was a cobra---a
giant cobra. It was in the well. It had built its nest in a crack
in the side. It was a female. There would be eggs and then young.
The well was unapproachable, Armagam had been bitten. The master
must build a new well at once. With the aid of the estate dispenser
I lanced the two tiny blue punctures in the wretch's leg, cauterised
the wound, gave him a bottle of gin, and sent him off in a bullock
cart to the hospital twelve miles away. (He recovered!) Then,
accompanied by two Tamil "Kenganies" and the Malay overseer,
I went out to examine the well. My rifle was still at Port Dickson.
My gun I had lent to the District Officer at Jelebu. My only weapon
was my rat-shooting revolver. At the well all was still. The Tamil
"Kengany" pointed out the hole some eight feet down,
in which the cobra had made her home, and with a long bamboo pole
my Malay overseer hammered at the entrance. Then life moved with
cinematic swiftness. There was a warning hiss. A black hood showed
itself at the hole, raised an angry head, and sent my companions
running for their lives. I took careful aim, fired and likewise
retreated. There was a commotion from the well. Then all was still.
I had shot the cobra through the head. In its death struggle it
had fallen from its hole into the water. The victim of my wizardry
was exposed to the public gaze and to the public awe. My reputation
was made. In future I could go anywhere.

It was a fortunate chance, because the nearest way to Seremban
and civilisation lay through a Chinese mining village with a bad
reputation for gang-robberies. Already my bank clerk had been
held up by "Kheh" desperadoes, who, disappointed with
the contents of his wallet, had cut off his finger as the most
convenient means of removing his ring.

To this danger I was no longer exposed. Even in the mining
village it was well known (1) that I could shoot rats and cobras
with a single bullet, (2) that I never travelled without my revolver,
and (3) that I never carried money. I travelled, therefore, in
peace. I confess, however, that nothing in life has thrilled me
quite so much as riding an ordinary push-bike through the jungle
in the middle of the night. This ordeal, terrifying and yet enchantingly
mysterious, was my experience every time I went into the chief
town and stayed for dinner. As I had to be on my estate before
six o'clock the next morning, I used to set out on the return
journey about midnight. From the fourth to the tenth milestone
I did not pass a single house and for six miles I rode for dear
life through a forest of giant trees which in the moonlight cast
fantastic shapes and shadows across my path. In the distance,
like King Solomon's mountains, loomed the hills of Jelebu, mysterious,
intimate and yet unfriendly. In the face of this unknown world,
which quickened my senses, until like the soldier in the fairy-tale
I could put my ear to the ground and hear people whispering some
miles away, I was afraid, but there was fascination in my fear.
Always I was glad when I reached home. But never was I too afraid
to accept a dinner invitation in Seremban or to face the journey
home through the jungle. It was a good apprenticeship for Bolshevik
Russia. Familiarity soon conquers fear. I grew used to the nightly
concert of owls and night-jars. Occasionally, I heard a tiger
roaring to its mate. Once I nearly ran into a black panther. But
these were rare interludes, and in the end, although I never quite
conquered the feelings of eerieness, my fears left me.

I was now to seek other adventures. I have said that I cultivated
good relations with the deposed Sultan and his wife. My diplomacy
bore fruit, and shortly before the fast of Ramazan I received
an invitation to a "rong-geng"---a kind of dancing competition
at which the professional dancing girls dance and sing Malay love
quatrains. And as they sing, they throw challenges to the would-be
poets and dancers among the local youth. To the European it is
not a particularly enthralling performance. The dancers do not
dance in couples, but shuffle side by side, the man endeavouring
to follow the steps of the professional lady. To the Malay, however,
it is a romantic adventure with an irresistible sex appeal. Occasionally,
a young man, his blood heated to boiling point, will lose all
restraint and try to hurl himself on one of the girls. Then the
local bodyguard steps into action and the delinquent is removed
forcibly from the arena for the rest of the evening. He is disgraced
but envied.

A model of decorum and European propriety, I sat between the
Sultan and his virile spouse. The Sultan, old and shrivelled,
maintained a dignified silence. His activities were confined to
plying me with sweet lemonade and whiskey. His virago was more
voluble. She discoursed to me on the wickedness of the younger
generation and, particularly, of the young women. I enjoyed her
conversation. According to local report she had been the wickedest
woman of her own generation. Her lovers had been as numerous as
the seeds of a mangosteen, but none had ventured to criticise
her conduct or to exert the customary Malay rights of a jealous
husband or paramour. Even then, with her betel-stained lips and
her wrinkled face, she was more than a match for any man. She
reminded me of Gagool in "King Solomon's Mines" and
inspired me with the same awe and respect.

On the whole, however, it was a tedious entertainment. I did
not dare to turn my head to inspect the ladies of the "istana"
who, with "sarongs" drawn over their heads, revealing
only their dark, mysterious eyes, stood behind me. I retired early,
determined to requite the hospitality I had received by a far
more gorgeous spectacle. The next morning I engaged from a neighbouring
state two "rong-geng" girls, whose beauty was a byword
even in this remote village. I cleared a space in my own compound,
erected seats and a miniature grandstand, and sent out invitations
broadcast for the following week.

The village, headed by the Court, turned up in full force.
In the moonlight the bright "sarongs" of the Malays
acquired a new and strange splendour. The palm-trees, still as
the night itself, cast a ghostly shadow over the earthen floor.
Myriads of stars shone from the dark blue canopy of heaven. It
was a ballet setting, of which Bakst himself might have been proud,
and with the removal of the first restraint my guests gave themselves
up to full enjoyment of the sensuous scene! To add lustre to my
own brilliance, I had invited the Commissioner of Police, a genial
Irishman, whom with some trepidation I placed between the Sultan
and his wife. I was thus free to organise the proceedings and
to superintend the arrangements for my guests. And then I saw
her. She was standing among the ladies of the "istana"---a
radiant vision of brown loveliness in a batik skirt and a red
silk coat. A "sarong" of blue and red squares was drawn
over her head, exposing only the tiniest oval of a face and eyes
which were as unfathomable as the night.

.

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE are moments in life which photograph themselves indelibly
on the brain. This was such a moment---what the French call the
coupde foudre. I have been in one of the worst
earthquakes in Japan. I have seen Tsarist ministers shot before
my eyes as a premonitory example of what my own fate was to be
if I did not speak the truth. I have had the roof lifted off my
house by a "Sumatra." But none of these cataclysms was
as tremendous or as shattering as the first explosion of love
in my heart when I saw Amai. I was twenty-three. I had spent four
years in France and Germany. I had been through my calf love,
but I had had no affairs, no dangerous attachments. I had been
living for six months in splendid isolation from my fellow countrymen.
I had not spoken to a white woman for over a year. Steeped in
an unhealthy romanticism, I was ripe for temptation. My life was
abnormal enough for me to take my temptation with tragic seriousness.
And serious it was in its consequences to both of us, changing
the course of both our lives.

For the rest of that evening I was in a fever. A fierce longing
to be rid of my guests consumed me. I left the Sultan and his
malignant wife to the cares of the Commissioner and, crossing
to the other side of the arena, I walked up and down, staring
across at the frail beauty of this Malayan girl, who had so suddenly
disturbed the monotony of my life. Just above her head there was
a torchlight, which seemed to shine on her alone, making her stand
out like a pearl on a black background. And, indeed, she was passing
fair for a Malay, her skin being far lighter than the skin of
the peasant women who worked in the fields. I was soon to discover
why.

Letting impatience get the better of discretion, I summoned
Si Woh, my Malay headman, whom I had brought from Singapore and
whose relations with the villagers were none too good.

"The girl standing behind the Sultan---who is she?"
I whispered fiercely.

His face never changed. Slowly he swept the arena with his
eyes as though following the movements of the dancers. He showed
no astonishment. He roused no suspicion. Then, talking as though
he was discussing some detail of estate work, he answered slowly:

"The crow does not mate with the bird of Paradise. That
is Amai, the Sultan's ward. She is married and is about to divorce
her husband. When the divorce is through, she will be married
to the Sultan's cousin."

I waited impatiently until the last guest had gone. Then, with
my new knowledge adding to my ardour, I unburdened myself to my
Commissioner friend. His warning was more explicit than Si Woh's.
In a few terse sentences he told me to put Amai out of my head
now and for always. Otherwise there would be trouble---serious
trouble. Native women were all the same anyway. There were others
more easily attainable and less dangerous.

The advice was good. I should have taken it. Instead, I set
in motion such machinery as I possessed in order to establish
contact with my goddess. I took Si Woh into my confidence. Through
him I enlisted the services of an old woman attached to the "istana"---a
betel-stained old hag who pleaded my suit for me. My progress
was slow, but I never relented. Every day at five o'clock Amai
used to walk from her house to the "istana," and every
day at five o'clock I stood at the corner of the road to watch
her pass. We made no sign. I remained motionless. To have spoken
would have ruined everything. She never unveiled. She never slackened
her pace. And on these daily two minutes of transient passing
I lived for six weeks. Then one evening, soon after the divorce
proceedings had been completed, I went to my usual trysting-place.
The sun was setting and had settled like a ball of fire on the
highest mountain peak. A cooling breeze brought a rich fragrance
from the jungle. I waited for a few minutes, drinking in the warm
beauty of the Malayan sunset, a gnawing hunger in my heart. For
once the road was empty. My eyes were fixed on the little footpath
which led from her house to the road. At last she came, a crimson
"sarong" over her head and small green slippers on her
feet. Would she pass me by again as she had passed me on so many
occasions before---without a sign, without even a glance? She
seemed to be walking more slowly than usual. When she was nearly
opposite me, she paused, drew her "sarong" back until
it showed the lotus-blossom in her hair, and looked straight into
my eyes. Then, like a startled hare, she turned and, quickening
her steps, disappeared into the gathering darkness.

I went home on fire. I summoned Si Woh. I summoned the old
"bidan" [the court medicine woman]. A meeting---a real
meeting---must be arranged at once.

Two days later the "bidan" came back. She looked
more sinister than ever. With many prayers for her own safety
she told me that everything had been arranged. The meeting was
for that night. I was to wait at the edge of the jungle opposite
the ninth milestone at nine o'clock, and Amai would come to me.
I was to be punctual and very careful. I was to avoid the road.

Very deliberately I made my preparations. I oiled my revolver,
put on a pair of rubber-soled gym shoes, and slipped an electric
torch into my pocket. Then, trembling with excitement, I set out
on my wild adventure. I had about a mile to walk through a narrow
jungle path which led to a disused tin mine. There was the river
to cross by a rickety bamboo bridge which even by daylight was
a balancing test for any white man. It was not a journey which
I would have made for money. No woman will ever tempt me to make
it again. Fear lent speed to my limbs, and, when I arrived at
the footpath across the rice fields by which Amai had to come,
I was a quarter of an hour before my time. The waiting was worse
than the walking. In the stillness of the Malayan night my hearing
was intensified a hundred-fold. The harsh call of the night-jar
filled me with forebodings. A giant moth, attracted by my silver
buttons, embedded itself in the folds of my coat, striking terror
into my heart. There was no moon---not a star in the sky. Crouching
on my haunches like a native, I waited, gun in hand, while the
minutes passed in an agony of slowness. Had the old "bidan"
played a trick on me? If so, she would pay dearly for it on the
morrow. Had Amai's courage failed her at the last moment? For
her the ordeal was a thousand times more dangerous than for me.
Then, when despair had almost driven me away, I heard a splash.
Some living creature had slipped in the marshy water of the "Padi"
field. Then silence, followed by a footstep, and, before I could
distinguish whether it was a man or beast, a figure loomed suddenly
out of the darkness not two paces in front of me. I jumped to
my feet. The figure stopped. A faint smell of perfume filled my
nostrils. She had come. It was Amai. For one fierce moment I held
her in my arms, her body trembling like the quivering of Ialang
grass at the first touch of the morning sun. Then, taking her
by the hand, I led her swiftly from the night down that murky
jungle path, across that rickety bridge, back to the friendly
shelter of my bungalow. She was never to leave it again until
I myself was to be led, half-corpse, half-man, on to the boat
at Port Swettenham which was to bear me for ever from the shores
of Malaya.

The rest of the story is all tragedy or all comedy according
to the romanticism or cynicism of the reader. After that first
night Amai remained in my bungalow. Her presence was not merely
a visible proof of her love; it was also inspired by fear of her
own people. In short, the affair of Amai provoked a great scandal.
My bungalow underwent a kind of siege. My Malayan Gagool came
to interview me on my doorstep. She came to cajole and entice
and remained to threaten. She enlisted the services of her nephew,
a ruling prince and a charming young man with whom I had frequently
played football. His embarrassment was great. He liked Europeans
and he liked me. Over our "stengahs" we discussed the
situation from every angle. He offered me the fairest "houri"
of his principality. But Amai I must surrender. She was of the
blood royal. It was an insult to his aunt and, worse still, it
was dangerous to me. The Malays of my village were not civilised
like himself. There would be trouble---very serious trouble. He
shook his head and smiled, just like my Police Commissioner, but
he might as well have talked to the wind as tried to over-ride
my Scottish obstinacy. I did not wish to quarrel with the man,
still less did I wish to hurt his pride. The affair had made some
stir even in European circles. It had reached the ears of the
Resident, and I had found it necessary to take counsel's opinion.

I went to Mr. C., an important government official, who had
married a Malay, and who was a member of a family with a distinguished
record of service in the East. His unofficial advice---his official
advice was like "Punch's" advice about marriage---was
given from the dearly-bought store of his own oriental wisdom.

"This is a question of face-saving," he said. "You
must gain time. You must say you are preparing to become a Mohammedan."

In my interview with Gagool's nephew I bethought myself of
this advice. When all else had failed, I turned to him and said:
"I am ready to become a Mohammedan. I have written to the
Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain the necessary permission."

When a man is infatuated with a woman, there are almost no
limits to the baseness of his conduct. In the eyes of other men
my conduct was base and sordid---but not in my own. To keep Amai
I was prepared to embrace Mohammedanism. It is not an episode
in my life of which I am proud or for which I seek to make my
youth and my loneliness an excuse, but at the time it was---in
the literal sense of the words---deadly serious. It was not merely
infatuation. Something of the lust of battle was in my soul---the
same spirit which in rugby football has always made me prefer
a struggle against odds to an easy victory. I was playing a lone
hand against the world, and I was determined to play it to the
last trick.

The Prince professed himself satisfied. Gagool and the village
did not. Amai and I became outcasts. My football team deserted
me. Akbar, my best half-back, who held the nominal post of bendahara
or minister of war under Gagool, betook himself to the jungle.
I was warned that he was preparing to run "amok." My
Chinese cook left me. He was afraid of what might happen to my
food.

And then I fell ill. Day after day a particularly virulent
form of malaria wasted my flesh and blood. Every afternoon and
every morning I ran a temperature with the regularity of an alarm
clock. My doctor came. Like every one else the good man was immersed
in the rubber boom. His charge was by the mile, and, as my estate
was his most distant call, I could not afford him very often.
He drenched me with quinine, but to little purpose. As the months
passed, my illness became aggravated by a constant vomiting. I
could not keep down any solid food. In three months my weight
declined from twelve stone eight, to under ten stone. I became
depressed and miserable. All day I lay propped up in my long chair,
trying to read, cursing my half-caste assistants and the "kenganies"
who came to disturb me about the estate work, making myself a
burden and a nuisance to every one. But Amai I would not give
up. This determination, this obstinacy, was the one thing that
saved me from suicide.

For Amai herself I have nothing but praise. She was an incurable
optimist. She was not afraid of any man and she ran my house with
a rod of iron. Her cheerfulness, it is true, became a strain almost
greater than I could bear. She liked noise, which in Malaya means
that she liked the gramophone. It was not safe for her to go outside
the compound. She, therefore, stayed at home and played "When
the Trees are White with Blossom, I'll Return." Today, I
should break the record, or throw it at her head, but at that
time I was too weak. Instead, I made a martyr of myself. My only
relief from the gramophone was the piano. When I could bear the
blossom of the trees no longer, I would offer to play the tin-kettle
upright which I had borrowed from my cousin. Amai would then help
me to the piano-stool, put a shawl over my shoulders, and sit
beside me, while with chattering teeth and palsied fingers I strove
to recall the harmonies of my Viennese and Berlin days. Her taste
in music was entirely primitive. Obviously, she would have liked
negro spirituals and, more than negro rhythmics, the languorous
melodies of the Tsiganes. But in those days the Blue Danube was
the supreme thrill of her musical sensuousness, and, if Wolff
and Buresh could have descended on my bungalow with that combined
artistry which has made them supreme as exponents of the Viennese
waltz, she would have transferred her affections on the spot.

Perhaps I do her an injustice. She had her full share of pride
of race. She despised the women who worked in the fields. The
irregularity of her own position worried her not at all. Marriage
and my own Mohammedanism never entered her mind. As mistress of
the only "Tuan" in the district, she held her head proudly.
She had the only gramophone and the only piano in the village.
Moreover, she saved my life. Suspecting that I was being poisoned,
she allowed no food, which she had not prepared herself, to pass
my lips. And when I failed to recover, she sent Si Woh for Dowden,
the government doctor.

Dowden was a queer fellow---a cynical, morose Irishman, whom
I had known in my Port Dickson days. He was unhappy in the East
and vented his unhappiness in an aggressiveness which made him
unpopular. His heart, however, was all gold, and, as the son of
the Dublin Shakespeare and Shelley professor, he appealed to me
intellectually more than any other white man in Malaya. He was
not entitled to attend me professionally, but he was not the man
to worry overmuch about questions of etiquette. He came at once.
He saw and he grunted. And that night he went into the bar of
the Sungei Ujong Club. The rubber boom was then at its height.
Several planters, including my uncle, had made vast fortunes on
paper, and in the club drink flowed as it always seems to flow
in moments of sudden prosperity. My uncle was playing poker in
the cardroom----high poker with an "ante" of a hundred
dollars. Dowden, who had something of the Bolshevik in his nature,
tracked him down. My uncle had just raised the stakes. The doctor
poured a douche of cold water on his exuberance.

"If you don't want to lay out your stake in a white man's
coffin, you had better collect that nephew of yours at once!"

My uncle was shocked. He acted immediately. The next morning
he came out with two Chinese "boys" in his car. In silence
the "boys" packed my clothes. Wrapping me in blankets,
my uncle carried me into the car. Amai had disappeared into the
back room. She must have guessed what was happening, but she never
came forward. There was no farewell. But, as the car turned in
the compound drive, the sun cast a glint on her little silver
slippers which were lying neatly on the bottom step of my bungalow
entrance. They were the last I saw of her---the last I was ever
to see of her.

.

CHAPTER FIVE

TODAY, although I have travelled farther afield both by land
and sea than even most Scotsmen, I never remember the name of
a ship. I recall only vaguely the date and the route of my voyages.
Perhaps it was my illness; perhaps first impressions and the memories
of early youth are more easily retained; perhaps---and this is
true---the first home-coming is the one a man remembers best.
The fact remains that every moment of that long voyage from my
uncle's bungalow in Seremban to my Highland home in Scotland is
impressed on my mind as clearly as if it were yesterday. With
great generosity my uncle sent me to Japan for two months. His
doctor had said that, once I were removed from the source of infection
and infatuation, I should be a new man in six weeks. But Dowden
shook his head. He advised me to cut my traces and to go for good.
I was given money and a ticket to Yokohama. Maurice Foster, the
Worcestershire cricketer, brought me to Singapore. Ned Coke took
charge of me on board the steamer. He had left the Rifle Brigade
for big business in rubber in Malaya and in real estate in Canada,
and his immense physique and vigorous personality overwhelmed
me. I let myself be managed. The ship's captain, a German with
a Captain Kettle beard, was kindness itself. Perhaps the other
passengers objected to my constant retching. At any rate he gave
me a cabin to myself on the upper deck. But the voyage itself
was a nightmare. The sickness and the vomiting would not stop.
My clothes hung in loose folds on my wasted frame. The other passengers
had bets whether I should reach Japan alive. At Shanghai I was
too ill to go ashore. My eyes were too weak to allow me to read.
I wanted to die and was prepared to die. All day long I lay on
my long chair and gazed with a fixed vacant stare at the pleasant
panorama of hazy coast and island-studded sea. The ship's doctor
had me watched in case I slipped overboard. But there was no thought
of suicide in my mind---only an immense weariness of the body
and of the soul. I was well enough to appreciate the beauty of
the Inland Sea. I was well enough to write bad poetry---atrocious
sonnets to Amai in which I still heard the surf beating upon Malaya's
palm-crested shore with regret for the life and the love I had
lost. I was well enough, when we landed in Yokohama, to hate the
Japanese with all the prejudice of an Englishman who has worked
with the Chinese. But I was not well enough to eat. I was too
ill to withstand Ned Coke.

With military precision he had already decided my fate. He
was sailing for England via Canada in ten days. If I wished to
save my wretched carcass, I must sail with him. He had business
in Canada which would detain him six weeks. I should spend these
six weeks in the "Rockies." I should take the sulphur
baths at Banff (of which more anon). The fever would leave my
body, and I should land in Liverpool and be restored to my parents
in the same state of healthy and seraphic innocence in which I
had left them.

To me it seemed a complicated decision. Coke made it delightfully
simple. He took me to a Tokio doctor who confirmed Coke's views
about my salvation. He telegraphed both to my father and to my
uncle for the necessary funds for this new journey, and both lots
of money---more than double what was necessary for my needs---arrived
three days later. He was the perfect organiser, and, if I qualify
the perfection later, I cast no reflection either on his merits
or on my own gratitude. If I were dictator of England at this
moment, I should make him Earl of Leicester and leader of the
House of Lords. He would soon find the necessary means of reinvigorating
that palace of somnolence or, failing in his task, he would, like
Samson, remove it on his broad shoulders and deposit it gracefully
in the Thames.

Having paid this tribute to my rescuer, I must return to the
narrative of my voyage. Everything worked out according to plan.
Crossing the Pacific, I shivered and suffered tortures from ague.
But at last I began to take nourishment without ill effects. I
could even watch with zest a British admiral (long since dead)
indulging in deck hockey with that ferocious youthfulness which
makes us at once the envy and the laughing-stock of foreigners.
When we arrived at Vancouver, I was introduced to Robert Service
and for the first time for months the blood came back to my cheeks.
I was a shy youth and could still blush, and Service, then at
the height of his fame, was the first British author I had met.
He gave me autographed copies of his "Songs of a Sourdough,"
and his "Ballads of Cheechako." Today, with the rest
of my books, they are doubtless gracing the shelves of a Bolshevik
library unless, which is highly probable, they have been burnt
by the Moscow hangman as imperialistic effluvia and, therefore,
noxious to the Moscow nostrils.

In the smoking-room of the C.P.R. Hotel I heard delirious conversation
about speculators in real estate who had made millions in a night,
leaving in their trail a ruin which has lasted to this day. There,
too, for the first time I heard the name of Max Aitken, who, having
fought and beaten the millionaires of Montreal, had gone to seek
new fields of conquest in England. It is a tribute to the honesty
of my romanticism, if not to the soundness of my judgment, that
at that moment Max Aitken meant nothing to me and Robert Service
a good deal.

Be that as it may, I read Service's books, had a drink with
him, and sniffed the Canadian air. The combined effort cured me
of my infatuation for Amai and made me turn my eyes towards the
West. And so to Banff.

Patriotism is the most abused of all sentiments. In its best
sense it expresses an animal instinct of self-preservation. In
its worst it is tainted with material interests and such sordid
things as money and self-advancement. In the Englishman it manifests
itself in a dumb contempt for everything that is not English.
The Scot has a more practical patriotism. His contempt for foreigners
includes the Englishman, but is carefully concealed. His jingoism
is confined to cheering Scotland at Twickenham. It is racial rather
than local. It concerns Scotland hardly at all. Its aim is the
glorification and self-satisfaction of the Scot in whatever part
of the globe the impulse of self-advancement drives him.

There is, however, another form of patriotism which may be
truly expressed as love of country. This is the actual love which
is in every man for the place in which he was born and brought
up. It may be inspired by vanity, by the desire to see himself
reflected again in the glory of his youth. It is especially strong
in the man who has been brought up in beautiful surroundings,
but it affects even the man from Wigan. It is strongest of all
in the Highlander.

Banff with its glorious background of fir and pine was to me
the first breath of returning life. Rarely have I felt so homesick,
and this outpost of Scotland was already half-way home. The Rockies
were grander than the Grampians, but they were like the Grampians.
The Bow River made a substitute for the Spey. The village itself
was named after a Scottish town not twenty miles away from the
scenes of my own early youth. I took Banff to my heart. I hired
a launch and explored the Bow River (alas! I was still too weak
to fish) and I visited the cold waters of Lake Louise and Lake
Minnewanka. I talked with the Indians in the settlement. I discovered
Parkman and read him voraciously. I devoured stories of Soapy
Smith and the other brigands of the trail of '98. Klondyke was
still on every one's lips. In every township one found the scarred
and frost-bitten victims of the gold rush. It was an age of romance---sordid
enough when one looked beneath the surface, but in the luxurious
comfort of a C.P.R. Hotel no one wanted to look. Motor-buses had
not yet made the highways hideous. There was no army of American
tourists to fill the mountain air with their discordant rapture.
Dangerous Dan McGrew was at any rate true to life and "Soapy"
himself a nearer descendant of Dick Turpin than Al Capone. Above
all, the mountain passes lit by the Arctic moon were a more fitting
setting for romantic crime than the searchlights and machine-guns
of the underground fastnesses of Cicero.

If it is true that man creates his own atmosphere, Nature can
make or mar the process, and in Banff Nature was a powerful ally.
I bathed myself in the romance of the Far West and felt better.
I was now to bathe in a more literal sense.

Ned Coke was the agent of my undoing. My health was his constant
preoccupation. My progress towards recovery delighted him, and,
rightly, he took full credit for it. Unfortunately, he was unable
to leave well alone. He had the mind of a prospector, and he was
always seeking new fields of exploration. At Banff there were
famous sulphur baths---open-air baths situated some 1,000 feet
above sea level. I had spent three years in an unhealthy climate
almost on the equator. I was suffering from as had an attack of
malaria as mortal man could withstand and, if the desire to live
had returned, death had not yet relaxed his grip on my enfeebled
body. Common-sense might have pointed out to me the folly of bathing
in the open air in a high and cooler altitude. I had, however,
little common-sense and less will-power, and Coke was an experimentalist.
He found an ally in the hotel doctor----a young enthusiast, who
was impressed by Coke's persuasiveness and wished to share in
the credit of the discovery of sulphur as a sovereign cure for
malaria. Perhaps my faith was not as strong as Naaman's. At any
rate I bathed in Banff's Jordan. I stayed in the bubbling sulphur
the requisite number of minutes ordained by Coke and his McGill
University admirer. Unaided, but with chattering teeth, I returned
to the hotel; within ten minutes my temperature had risen to 103.
I retired to bed. My friends piled blanket after blanket on top
of me. An hour later my temperature had risen another point. Gasping
and half-delirious, I raved for quinine. Prompted by Coke, the
doctor gave me five grains of quinine and five grains of aspirin.
Then they both withdrew to leave me to sleep. Fortunately, they
left the bottles on my night-table. I made a sign to Harry Stephenson,
who had remained with me, and Harry gave me fifteen grains more
of both the quinine and the aspirin. For four hours I tossed in
my delirium, half-way between life and death. And then the sweat
broke. I dripped through my sheets. I dripped through my mattress.
My bed was like a pool. But my temperature was down, and, limp
and weary, I changed beds and slept myself back to life.

The rest of my homeward voyage was accomplished without incident.
I stayed a week in Quebec, read the "Chien d'0r," scaled
the heights of Abraham and dreamed those first dreams of Empire
which were afterwards to make me a willing disciple of the policy
of Lord Beaverbrook. The seeds of my Canadian visit bore fruit
in 1916, when I was the first Englishman to celebrate Empire Day
in Russia in a fitting and official manner.

The only fiasco was the actual home-coming itself. If the blue
skies of the Canadian autumn had restored some of my former vigours,
the fogs of Liverpool brought a return of my malaria and with
it a fresh access of that moral cowardice which in moments of
crisis has always been my bane in life.

I returned to the bosom of my family who were then rusticating
in the Highlands. There was, however, no fatted calf for the returning
prodigal. My mother welcomed me, as mothers will always welcome
their first born, that is to say, with gratitude to God for my
escape from death and with sorrow for the disappointment of her
fondest hopes. My father, himself the most austere of moralists,
has always been tolerance itself in his attitude towards others.
No word of reproach fell from his lips. I am, however, on my mother's
side, a member of the Clan Gregarra, and until her death our family
world moved on the axis of my grandmother---an Atlas of a woman
who supported on her broad shoulders a vast army of children and
grandchildren. She was a woman cast in the Napoleonic mould ---an
avatar of the old Highland Chieftains whose word was law and whose
every whim a command which had to be fulfilled. She supported
the clan with a generosity which is rare in these days, but the
business of the clan was her business, and woe betide the scapegoat
whose delinquencies were brought to her notice by any other members
of the family than the offender himself.

She was a rigid and austere Presbyterian who ruled her ministers
with the same iron rod with which she ruled her family. Nor was
she tolerant of clerical opposition. On one occasion the elders
of the Speyside congregation over which she presided dared to
select as parish minister a candidate against whom she had turned
her face. Her anger was as sharp as her decision. She deserted
the church where her ancestors were buried, and half a mile away
set up at her own expense a new church and a new manse for the
candidate whom she herself had approved. Not until the offending
minister had passed away did she relent. Then her repentance was
as magnanimous as her anger had been petty. Her own church was
joined to the old church and converted into a free library and
concert hall. The manse was sold for the benefit of the parish,
and she herself returned to the family pew in which she had sat
in judgment on so many sermons. Today her remains repose on the
banks of the Spey beside those massive granite boulders of which
she herself had been in life the living embodiment.

She was a great woman, but like most Presbyterians she worshipped
material success. At the time of my return she had made a vast
paper fortune out of her plantations in the Malay States. In Edinburgh
she was re-christened the Rubber Queen, and the flattery had gone
to her head like new wine. Already she saw herself controlling
the Stock Exchange. Her financial success was the reward of her
own foresight and business acumen. She refused to see anything
exceptional in this most exceptional of booms and, heedless of
the warnings of her brokers, she continued to buy rubber shares
on a falling market Within a few years her fortune had dwindled
to proportions incommensurate with her scale of expenditure.

At that moment, however, her star was in the ascendant. Planters
are not renowned for their intellectual attainments. Yet every
planter had made money out of the rubber boom. I, who had been
a scholar, had failed to profit by my golden opportunities. This
was the measure of my business capacity in her eyes. I was a fool.

There was worse to come. The news of my moral delinquencies
had preceded my arrival. There had been gossip. My uncle had been
accused of neglecting me, and, if he was too good a sportsman
to bother to defend himself, other relatives in the Malay States
had undertaken the task for him. The shadow on my grandmother's
face, when she greeted me, was the shadow of Amai.

Every day I was made to feel myself a moral leper. I was dragged
to church. If the sermon was not actually preached at me, it was
interpreted in that sense afterwards by my grandmother. The scarlet
woman was conjured up before my eyes on every conceivable occasion.
I was too weak to fish or shoot. Instead, I went motoring with
my grandmother. Every drive was the occasion for a lecture. Every
scene of my boyhood was recalled and pointed to adorn a moral
tale. I was told to lift up my eyes to the hills, until even my
beloved Grampians became a plague-spot and a canker of self-torture.
To this day I hate the right bank of the Spey, because that year
my grandmother's shoot was on that bank.

That October in the Highlands undid all the good which Canada
had done for my health, and, shattered in mind and body, I returned
to the South of England to place myself once more in the hands
of the doctors. I visited two malaria specialists in Harley Street.
Their reports were grave. My heart was seriously affected. My
liver and spleen were enlarged. My digestion was ruined. The process
of recovery would be slow, very slow. I could never return to
the Tropics. I must not walk up-hill. Exercise was out of the
question. Even golf was forbidden. I must be careful, very careful.

I returned to my father's home in Berkshire and, freed from
the moral domination of my grandmother's personality, began at
once to recover. In spite of the English winter and frequent bouts
of malaria, I put on weight. I cast my drugs and tonics into the
outer darkness and confined my medicine to a brandyflip a day.
In three months I was playing rugby football again. So much for
the experts of Harley Street.

.

CHAPTER SIX

Partial recovery, however, did not solve the question of my
existence. The malaria had left me with an impaired will-power
and an unhealthy morbidness. If a certain amount of morbidity
in the thoughts of a young man is normal, the lack of will-power,
which is a characteristic reaction of tropical fevers, is serious
and not easily remedied. I had no ambitions of any kind. In a
delightfully vague manner I desired to be an author. I was given
a special room in my father's home and there I sat through the
winter, writing sketches of Eastern life and short stories with
morbid settings and unhappy endings. I engaged in desultory correspondence
with various literary agents. At the end of six months I had succeeded
in placing one short story and two articles. My receipts were
smaller than my postage bill.

And then one May morning my father sent for me. There was nothing
peremptory about the command, no reproach in what he said. He
talked to me---as I hope I shall be able to talk to my own son
when his turn comes---suggesting rather than ordering, studiously
safeguarding my sensitiveness, solicitous only of my welfare even
if that welfare entailed more sacrifices and more self-denial
on his part. He pointed out to me what many others have pointed
out before: that literature was a good crutch, but scarcely a
pair of legs, that I did not seem to be making much headway, and
that security of occupation was the master-key to happiness in
life. At twenty-three I was too old for most government examinations.
There was, however, the general Consular Service. It was a career
in which my knowledge of foreign languages would reap their full
benefit and which would give abundant scope to my literary ambitions.
Had not Bret Harte and Oliver Wendell Holmes been members of the
American Consular Service? In slow and measured sentences my father
expounded the pleasures of a life of which he knew less than nothing.
Then, like the Fairy Godmother, he produced his surprise packet---a
letter from John Morley announcing that he had been able to procure
for me a nomination for the next examination. Years before, my
grandfather, a staunch Conservative and one of the earliest Imperialists,
had opposed Morley at Arbroath, and such is the sporting spirit
of English political life that twenty years afterwards the great
man had seen fit to bestir himself on behalf of the grandson of
the defeated candidate.

Before this new onslaught of my father's kindness, my defences
broke down. Doubtless, his manner of dealing with a recalcitrant
and self-indulgent offspring was too gentle. But I have studied
at close hand the methods of the stern, relentless father, and
the results have brought neither happiness to the parent nor discipline
to the children. If, viewed from the angle of material success,
my life has been a failure, my father has the consolation that
in a flock of six I have been the only black sheep and that to
all of us he has remained not only a wise counsellor but a friend
and companion from whom not even the most shameful secret need
be withheld.

As I read the Morley letter, I looked into the mirror of my
past life. The reflection gave me no satisfaction. I had been
an expensive investment for my parents. Hitherto I had paid no
dividends. It was time that I began. To the unqualified relief
of my father I graciously consented to burden the Civil Service
Commissioners with the correction of my examination papers.

Before I could enter the precincts of Burlington House there
were certain formalities to be fulfilled. Almost immediately I
had to undergo a personal inspection by a committee of Foreign
Office inquisitors. Dressed in my most sombre suit, I travelled
to London, made my way to Downing Street, and was piloted into
a long room on the first floor of the Foreign Office, where some
forty or fifty candidates sat waiting their turn in various degrees
of nervousness. The procedure was simple but tedious. At one end
of the room there was a large door before which stood a Foreign
Office messenger. At intervals of ten minutes the door would open,
an immaculately dressed young man with a sheet of paper in his
hand would whisper to the messenger, and the messenger, clearing
his throat, would announce in stentorian tones to the assembled
innocents the next victim's name.

By the time my turn came the room was nearly empty and my nerves
had gone back on me. I was in agony lest there had been some mistake
and my name had been forgotten. I saw myself forced into making
some sheepish explanation. Only terror lest my boots should creak
prevented me from tiptoeing to the messenger to set my doubts
at rest. Then, just when I had given up hope, the frock-coated
messenger raised his voice, and this time the rafters re-echoed
with the name "Mr. Bruce Lockhart." With flushed face
and clammy hands I crossed the threshold of my fate and passed
into the inner temple. My mind was a blank. My carefully rehearsed
answers were completely forgotten.

Fortunately, the inquisition was less formidable than the waiting.
In a narrow oblong room six senior officials sat at a long table.
For a moment I stood before them like a prize bull at a cattle
show undergoing the scrutiny of six pairs of bespectacled or bemonocled
eyes. Then I was told to take a seat on the other side of the
table. Again there was a pause while the inquisitors rustled with
their papers. They were extracting my curriculum vitae---that
record of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi which
like the questionnaire of an insurance company every candidate
is obliged to produce before he can present himself for examination.
Then, with the politeness of Stanley addressing Livingstone, the
chairman smiled at me benevolently: "Mr. Lockhart, I presume,"
and, before I knew where I was, I was being questioned about my
experiences as a rubber planter. I imagine most of the inquisitors
were interested personally in the rubber market. At all events
I underwent a rapid cross-fire of questions about the merits of
different shares. As my knowledge was greater than that of my
examiners, my confidence returned, and I expanded with volubility
and authority on the dangers and possibilities of the Malayan
Eldorado. I hope they took my advice. It was inspired with caution
derived from the experiences of my own overoptimistic relations.

Then, just when I felt completely at my case, I was brought
back to earth with a sudden bump. Hitherto I had been playing
the schoolmaster to a band of attentive and enthusiastic schoolboys.
Now the roles were to be suddenly reversed. Across the smooth
plains of this pleasant and entirely satisfactory conversation
came an icy blast from a stumpy little man with a wrinkled forehead
and iron-grey moustache.

"And will you tell us, Mr. Lockhart, why you left this
terrestrial Paradise?"

My knees rocked. Had the omniscience of the Foreign Office
already discovered the escapade of Amai? It had been glossed over
in my testimonials. It did not figure in my curriculum vitae.
The speaker was Lord Tyrrell---at that time plain Mr. Tyrrell---and
there and then, with an instinct which has rarely played me false,
I registered him as a potential enemy. With an effort I pulled
myself together.

"I had a very bad attack of malaria," I said. And
then I added feebly: "but I'm playing 'rugger' again now."
This afterthought was a happy inspiration. A sportsman with a
monocle and the lean spare figure of an athlete came to my rescue.

"Are you a relation of the Cambridge googly bowler?"
he asked. (My brother---a double Blue and "Rugger" International
---was then at the height of his athletic fame.)

"He is my little brother," I said simply. And with
that password I received the official blessing and passed out
again into the sunshine.

So far so good. There remained, however, the more serious obstacle
of the written examination. The more I considered my chances,
the less I liked them. In that year of grace there were only four
vacancies. The number of registered candidates exceeded sixty.
Practically all had been preparing for the examination for several
years. Several had been in the first twenty the previous year.
Half a dozen had taken first-class honours at Oxford and Cambridge.
I had done no scholastic work of any kind for three years. Now
I had only ten weeks in which to prepare myself for an examination,
which not only was highly competitive, but which included among
its obligatory subjects, law and economics. Of law I had not read
a single line. Political economy was to me an occult and mysterious
science. Truly, indeed, the outlook seemed hardly worth the effort.

My father, however, was enthusiastically optimistic. I transferred
myself to London and entered the most successful "crammer"
of those days. The experience plunged me into even deeper gloom.
For one long week I attended my classes with unfailing patience
and punctuality. The other candidates were finishing off where
I was beginning, and the lectures on law and political economy---doubtless,
admirably given, but intended rightly for advanced students---were
sheer waste of time. My despair roused me to action, and I took
a rapid decision. I wrote to my father and told him that I must
leave the "crammer" and that I proposed taking my chance
on the other subjects and engaging the services of the law coach
and the political economy coach for private tuition. My father
agreed to the extra expense. As my fees for the term had been
paid in advance, the "crammer" authorities made no objection.

My law coach was a born teacher. My political economy coach
was a German genius who had gone to seed on snuff and whiskey.
Together we "gutted" Marshall and Nicholson, and, as
we did our work in German, I was enabled to kill two subjects
with one fee.

My plan of campaign involved three hours a day with my coaches
and whatever work I chose to do by myself. There were, however,
disturbing distractions. An uncle, who after ten years of incessant
labour had made a fortune, had come to London to enjoy himself.
He had fallen in love with a charming South American who required
a chaperon. He required some one to engage the attentions of the
chaperon, and the most tractable and easily managed some one was
myself. He made me give up my modest rooms in Bayswater and took
me to live with him in his hotel. Every evening we dined en
partie carrée, went to a theatre and then to supper
at the Ritz or the Carlton. It was scarcely the best preparation
for a sadly unprepared candidate, but with the supreme egotism
which characterises most successful business men my uncle had
no idea of the harm he was doing. On the contrary, he hounded
me off to my coaches' rooms every morning and informed me that
if I failed to pass I should be cut out of his will. I laughed
and continued to drink his champagne. He has since married twice,
and the chances of my heritage have been wrecked, partly on the
quicksands of my own follies, but mainly through the arrival into
this world of four flourishing cousins, who are young enough to
be my own children. In the intervening years, however, he has
rewarded my chaperonage a thousandfold, and today, but for my
reckless extravagance, the sum total of his generosity would he
yielding me an income of some five hundred pounds a year.

In this spirit of preparation I approached that fatal first
week in August when with a strange lack of consideration the Civil
Service Commissioners unfold the doors of Burlington House to
the youthful hopes of the nation. I give a detailed account of
the proceedings for the benefit of those pedagogues who believe
in the futility of all examinations. In my own experience they
will find an ample justification for their theories.

When on that Monday morning I took my place in. the queue of
perspiring candidates, my prospects were so poor as to relieve
me personally of all anxiety. The disadvantages of my unpreparedness
were obvious. Against them I could set two advantages: I was more
of a man of the world than my fellow-competitors and, having,
as I thought, no chance, I had no nerves. I had perhaps one other
advantage and certainly one enormous piece of luck. That summer
was the hottest summer England had experienced for many years,
and I liked heat. That year, too, for the first time an essay
was included in the French and German papers---an innovation which
had escaped the vigilance of the "crammers" and which
left the candidates to their own slender resources. In the choice
of subjects for the French essay was included Kipling's tag of
"East is East and West is West." I fastened on it eagerly,
drawing on my Malayan experiences and paraphrasing whole pages
of Loti which I knew by heart. I enjoyed that examination, feeling
completely at my case in the face of a new adventure. My one embarrassment
was the paper on political economy. There were ten questions of
which we had to answer not more than six. Unfortunately, my knowledge
embraced only four. There was, however, one question on which
I was a minor expert. I wrote pages on it, scribbled short and
non-committal answers to the three other questions, and then added
a polite footnote to the effect that two hours was too short a
time in which to answer a paper of this nature.

On the Thursday evening, having completed my written papers,
I said goodbye to my coaches, who had worked with me every night
of the examination. As we shook hands, my German mentor handed
me a sealed envelope.

"You will open it," he said, "on the day the
result is declared. The envelope contains my prophecy of the successful
candidates. I am rarely wrong."

As soon as he had gone, I opened the letter. He had placed
me fourth, and in celebration of a joke which was truly "kolossal"
I dined at the CarIton and went to the theatre.

There remained only the oral examination on the next day to
complete my ordeal, and I considered I was entitled to some relaxation.
Nevertheless, the oral examination was nearly my undoing. My German
oral was at ten in the morning. I do not know if my late night
was to blame, but with the German examiner I lost my head. He
was altogether too suave and too enticing. Before I knew where
I was, he had drawn me into a conversation about Malaya. From
that starting point he proceeded to question me, for his own edification,
on the different processes of tapping rubber. Even in English
this is a technical and difficult basis for an ordinary conversation.
In a foreign language it was frankly impossible, and, although
my knowledge of German was considerable, I knew that I had made
a failure of my German oral. I left the room cursing myself for
my stupidity and determined not to be caught again in the same
manner. When I came out into the sunlight, I was in a quandary.
My French oral---the climax of my week's ordeal---was not until
five o'clock in the afternoon. All my friends had left for Scotland
or the Continent. How was I to fill in the long blank between
eleven and five? I hesitated and then stepped boldly across the
street. Opposite Burlington House was the "Bristol Bar,"
the favourite haunt of the foreign women who frequented the London
of the pre-war days. Stimulating my courage with a sherry and
bitters, I made the acquaintance of two elderly but extremely
voluble Pompadours. I gave them a free luncheon and free drinks,
in return for which they talked French with me. I went for an
hour's walk in the Green Park and returned at three thirty for
more alcohol and more French. By quarter to five my volubility
was immense and my accent almost perfect. Then at five minutes
to five I walked steadily across the road for my French oral.

Once again, like a convict with a warder, I was kept waiting
in the long corridor until the examiner's cell was free. This
time, however, all trace of nervousness was gone, and I entered
the room with the courage of a seasoned veteran. A mild-looking
professor with pince-nez and a drooping moustache looked up from
his desk and placed the tips of his fingers together.

"Can you tell me the name of the French Dreadnought recently
launched at Brest?" he asked.

I shook my head and smiled.

"No, sir," I said with a fine precision. "I
do not know and I do not care. I have only half an hour in which
to prove to you that I know French as well as you do. Let me talk
of other matters."

Then I made a lucky shot. He had a slight English accent and,
before he could interrupt me, I beat down his defences.

"You are Professor S-----," I said, "and last
week I reviewed a book of yours in the Maître Phonétique."

My conduct was a breach of the anonymity which is supposed
to be enjoyed by all Civil Service examiners, and the Professor
promptly reproved me without admitting or denying the accuracy
of my identification. The damage, however, had been done. The
conversation had been turned to phonetics in which science I was
an expert and he only a beginner, and from that moment I was safe.
For long past the regulation period the Professor continued to
be absorbed in our conversation. I had wound up the main spring
of his interest, and, when finally I said goodbye to him, I knew
that, however badly I had done in German, my French oral had been
a brilliant success.

.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THAT night I left for the Highlands, and for the next four
weeks I led a pleasant existence fishing in the Spey and shooting
my grandmother's grouse. As September approached, I experienced
vague pangs of uneasiness. I had prepared my parents for the disappointment
which I had assured them was bound to come. My pessimism did nothing
to relieve their anxiety about my future. My grandmother, in particular,
continued to regard me as a scapegrace, who had no right to the
good things of life. If I took a second glass of port at dinner,
I was sure to find her reproving eye fixed upon me. I lived in
an atmosphere of apprehensive disapproval and, resigning myself
to an inevitable return to rubber-planting and the East, I endeavoured
to extract as much enjoyment as I could from these last opportunities
of luxury in much the same spirit as a condemned man eats a hearty
breakfast before his execution.

Then on September 2nd, that blessed day which saw my birth,
I went into the neighbouring town to play a round of golf. As
I was putting on the third green, I was disturbed by a wild yell.
I looked up from my ball and saw my two young brothers careering
on bicycles across the mountainous slopes of our Highland course.
Norman, who was later to die gloriously at Loos, had disappeared
into a ditch. His front wheel was buckled, but his face was radiant
with excitement. He waved a paper triumphantly in the air.

"You're in," he gasped breathlessly. "You're
first!"

I took the paper from his hands. It was true. There it stood
in black and white: first, R. H. Bruce Lockhart. I studied the
cold marks sheet. I was first by seventeen marks. Fifty marks
covered the first four candidates. I had done badly in German
which was by far my best subject. I had qualified by one mark
in the mathematical paper. I was second in law and first in political
economy. I had collected thirty-five more marks in French than
any other candidate. I had received ninety-nine marks out of a
hundred for my French oral. The Pompadours had done it. I do not
know if they are still alive. I never discovered even their Christian
names. But for such damage as I have inflicted on the might, majesty
and dominion of the British Empire in my official capacity, they---and
they alone---must bear the full responsibility.

I abandoned my game and returned home to announce the glad
tidings to my parents. They had recently celebrated their silver
wedding, and most of my numerous relations had assembled in the
neighbourhood for the event. Great, indeed, was my welcome. Never
before or since have I felt so completely virtuous. An unstamped
envelope, bearing the inscription "On His Majesty's Service,"
had wrought a lightning metamorphosis in my existence, and overnight
I had passed from the ranks of the ne'er-do-weels into the Valhalla
of heroes. My grandmother took me to her ample bosom and with
the infallibility of the truly great announced firmly that she
had always believed in my success. She sent for her bag. She sent
for her spectacles. And, there and then, she wrote me out a cheque
for one hundred pounds. Her example was contagious, and that afternoon
I collected nearly two hundred pounds in tips. A few days later,
with my winnings still intact, I left for London in order to enter
upon my official duties at the Foreign Office.

In that year of grace the Foreign Office was a very different
place from what it is today. Then it combined space with elegance
and ease. Now it is a rabbit-warren overrun by bespectacled typists
and serious-looking and rather badly dressed young men. In 1911
there were still elderly gentlemen who wrote fastidiously with
quill-pens. A certain standard of penmanship and a minute attention
to margins were still demanded from youthful draft-writers. Otherwise,
it was a leisurely and not unpleasant existence, fortified by
regular hours and an adequate luncheon interval. If the hours
were longer than Palmerston's comparison with the fountains of
Trafalgar Square, "which played from ten to four," they
were not a weariness of the flesh. Nor were they devoted entirely
to work. In the department to which I was attached desk-cricket
flourished under the skilful guidance of Guy Locock, today the
presiding genius of the Federation of British Industries.

The war and the industry of Lord Curzon have destroyed this
calm backwater in the rushing river of life. The corridors, where
one used to play football with the Resident-Clerks, are now lined
with heavy cases of archives. Staffs have been doubled. Papers
have accumulated to such an extent that the conscientious official
has to work late into the night in order to complete his daily
task. The Foreign Office now works longer hours than most business
houses. It has become efficient and more democratic.

In my day it had a highly developed sense of its own superiority.
It was a home of mandarins, holding itself superbly aloof from
the more plebeian departments of Whitehall. The Treasury was admitted
to some degree of equality. After all, the allowances of even
ambassadors were subjected to Treasury control. We are justly
famed for our sense of the practical. I have yet to meet the Englishman
who is not prepared to put his social pride in his pocket if by
this action his pocket will benefit. The Board of Trade, on the
other hand, was regarded in much the same light as the Shooting
Eight at a public school ---as a home for bug-shooters. Junior
vice-consuls, whose main function is the fostering of British
trade abroad, were, therefore, looked upon as unnecessary intruders.
Their social position in the office was a kind of purgatory suspended
between the Heaven of the First Division and the Hell of the Second.

In those days the procedure with regard to a junior vice-consul
was as follows: before proceeding to a foreign post he was required
to spend three months in the Consular and Commercial departments
of the Foreign Office. Except for the fact that it gave me an
opportunity to know some of the clerks in the office, it was sheer
waste of time. In view of the official attitude towards trade,
these two departments were the most inefficient in the Foreign
Office. The senior clerks, who ran them, were men who had lost
all ambition and who had abandoned hope of further promotion.
They were the last stepping-stones to honourable retirement and
a pension.

As head of the new list of vice-consuls, I was sent for my
period of probation to the Consular Department. My "chief"
was Lord Dufferin---a kind and generous man, who smoked countless
cigarettes and who looked---and, indeed, was---a sick man. His
only exaction from his subordinates was neatness, his only passion---red
ink. My first fortnight in the office was sheer misery comparable
only with one's first fortnight at a public school. Nobody spoke
to me. Every day at eleven I made my appearance, dressed in the
stiffest of white collars and the regulation short black coat
and striped trousers. I minuted a few letters from distressed
British subjects abroad. Occasionally I wrote a draft demanding
the repayment of sums advanced by British consuls to stranded
seamen. Once I had a minor thrill. A letter arrived addressed
to His Majesty, and beginning with the words "My dear King."
It was from a young English girl of seventeen who had taken a
post with a Russian landowner in the Volga district. She was miles
from any railway station, and her employer was making love to
her in a particularly violent and disgusting manner. This pathetic
cry from the wilderness was given to me to answer, and my gorge
rose with indignant emotion. I wrote a strong minute which was
approved with commendable despatch. The telegraph wires were set
in motion. The intervention of His Majesty's Ambassador was requested,
and within thirty-six hours the little lady was set free and despatched
at government expense to her home in Ireland. For the first time
I had put my finger on the Empire's pulse. I had tasted power
and felt duly elated.

On the whole, however, there was little to do, and I was left
severely alone. Every day I lunched alone at the "Ship."
I could not share my meals with Kaye, my consular colleague in
the department, as we had alternate luncheon hours. Occasionally,
in the corridors I passed the silently great and greatly silent
figures of the Foreign Office hierarchy. Furtively, I studied
their gait and their mannerisms: the long, raking stride of Sir
Edward Grey, the automatic energy of Sir Eyre Crowe, the graceful
elegance of Sir Ian Malcolm, and the ponderous roll of Sir Victor
Wellesley. They were, however, vague and awe-inspiring shadows
in my existence, and they gave me proper sense of my own insignificance.

Gradually, as I came to know Guy Locock better, my lot improved.
We lunched together. With Sir George Buchanan and Harold Nicholson
he was one of the few Wellingtonians in the Foreign Office. As
my brothers were playing for Marlborough, I took him to see the
Wellington v. Marlborough "rugger" match. We played
golf together. I was admitted to desk cricket and became an expert.
From him I learnt the historical gossip of the office---wondrous
tales of the practical jokes of Lord Bertie and of other stalwarts
of bygone days. In return, with my weakness for self-revelation,
I told him the story of my life. Our friendship progressed so
rapidly that within a few weeks I was able to induce him to listen
to the Eastern sketches which I had written and which English
editors had been foolish enough to refuse. Doubtless, he found
the performance more amusing than the writing of consular minutes.

This literary entertainment, provided of course during office
hours, led to a strange turn in my fortunes. In the ordinary course
of events, after completing my six weeks in the Consular Department,
I should have been transferred to the Commercial Department, where
I should have come under the tutelage of Sir Algernon Law, a fierce
disciplinarian, of whom every youngster stood in awe. There had
been, however, a change in my own department. Lord Dufferin had
fallen ill and had been replaced temporarily by Don Gregory, who
was then a junior assistant. In the meantime the Agadir crisis
had broken out, and, as the political departments were working
at high pressure, our staff had been reduced in order to provide
extra help. One afternoon, as I was reading a particularly touching
tale of a Catholic missionary in the East to Guy Locock, Don Gregory
came into the room. The word "Catholic" must have caught
his ear.

"What's this?" he said in his pleasant, rather fussy
manner.

Guy explained.

"We have a literary genius in the office," he said.
"He's reading us a story about a Catholic missionary."

Gregory took my manuscript. The next day he asked me to dinner.
I met Mrs. Gregory and liked her. I talked about my life in the
East and gave her more manuscripts to read. I presented her with
a couple of Japanese portraits which I had bought in Japan and
about which I had written a sentimental sketch. Within a few days
I was asked to dine again. My position in the office changed.
Gregory gave me more work to do. I became, in short, his private
secretary. Then one day he sent for me.

"We are very short-handed," he said. "You will
gain nothing by going to the Commercial Department or by going
abroad too soon. I can arrange for you to stay here for a bit
to help us out. When the time comes for you to go abroad, I shall
see that you will lose nothing by this arrangement in the selection
of your post."

Of course I accepted. I was then still an Episcopalian, although
my sympathies with Roman Catholicism were already strong. This,
however, was enough. The generous, warm-hearted Don liked Catholics.
What was more important he seemed to like me, and I owe him the
full measure of my gratitude. As a departmental official he had
few equals, and from him I learnt much that was to benefit me
in future years. He put me wise about official life abroad. He
told me much about Rumania, where he had been en poste, and
about Poland, in whose fate he was deeply interested. He greatly
stimulated my interest in Russia, which even then he realised
was to be the storm-centre of Europe. Then, one evening about
Christmas time, he summoned me to his room and showed me a despatch.
It was an intimation from our Ambassador in St. Petersburg announcing
that the Russian Government had approved my appointment as British
Vice-Consul in Moscow.

"You will have to leave in a fortnight," he said
with a smile.

Moscow! Like a flash the Russia of Seton Merriman---the only
Russia I knew---passed before my eyes. Adventure, danger, romance
photographed themselves in my mind. But one thought dominated
everything. Moscow was Europe. It was only three days away from
home. Six weeks ago, but for my luckless Eastern manuscripts,
it was a thousand to one that like all new vice-consuls I should
have been sent to Colon or Panama, or at the best, to Chicago
or Pittsburgh. Gratefully I faltered out my thanks, and that night
I left the office for good to rush home to tell the good news
to my parents and to prepare for my departure.

There was to be one more adventure before I left. My father
and mother gave a farewell dance for me. It was attended by all
my---or rather their---friends in the neighbourhood. One house-party,
which turned up in full force, brought with it a beautiful Australian
girl, whom I had never seen before. I succumbed at once. I had
only a fortnight in which to press my suit. In ten days we were
engaged. Early in the year I left for Russia and she returned
to Australia. We were married during my first leave the following
year.